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Monday, July 5, 2010 -- 9:04 pm

When I have a long hiatus between blog posts, it's not that I have nothing to say; to the contrary. It's usually that I have too much to say,
a hypothesis too ambitious, and there's no point in publishing it online unless I'm reasonably sure I have it right and have the details to back it up.
A renowned philosophy professor once
commented -- that's the problem with one's education: it can never begin. I feel the same way about my various projects in waiting, including a study
on the fall of republics and another on musical aesthetics. There's just too much I feel I have to know in order to make a decent effort at it, even to
construct the scaffolding for the rest of my research.

This is not necessariy a bad thing. Certainly, I am aware of the cautionary tales of others, esteemed and erudite scholars who spend their entire lives
in study and never produce the magnum opus expected of them, leaving behind only a mass of indecipherable notes from which not even a thesis can be
extracted. No; I do understand that my time here is limited and I must get the show on the road. But at the very least, although I may be wrong in each of
my dozen works-in-progress, I don't think what I propose is obvious, and I think there is little risk either of plagiarism or of having my findings
scooped by someone with a quicker mind or pen.

But it does mean that, right now, I have remarkably little to show for all my research. But I'm getting the sense that at least a few projects are
accumulating a critical mass, and will soon ignite.